Things are different this April day
in 1909, when Albanian soldiers
at Yildiz Kiosk refuse
to surrender, when the last burials
of the men who fell for Schefket Pasha
took place eighty years ago; this day
a boy can drown in a swill barrel
with no help near,
and while the walls of Yildiz Palace
are being razed, burnt, blown to bits,
on the other side of the world
firemen in a junk-shop blaze
are attacked by rats, hundreds of rats,
rats used to the comfortable disorder
and piling rot of old gingham, old wallpaper, old oxfords,
all of them bargains before the blaze,
and the rats.
And fearing she is losing her mind,
the young wife of the manager
of the Rock Island Hotel
throws herself under the wheels
of a passenger train
bound for Denver and points west,
falling with the grace of the six hundred
Albanian soldiers also falling
in Constantinople, with the terrible grace
of the child falling in a swill barrel,
and no one near.
What difference does it make
now, that theirs are only a few more
lovely faces incised with pain,
and that the next morning
the city under seige will be quiet?
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